Scottsdale Water: Safe, affordable drinking water

Scottsdale is committed to providing our customers safe, reliable water at an affordable price. Scottsdale Water regularly performs hundreds of tests to ensure that the water you receive at Scottsdale homes and businesses is of the highest quality possible, exceeding all federal and local health and safety requirements.

As we do with all water quality standards, Scottsdale relies on the appropriate regulatory agencies – in the case of Chromium in drinking water, the EPA and their enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act – to determine safe consumption levels for all substances present in both our source and treated water.

The EPA has addressed the risk from Hexavalent Chromium (or Chromium-6) by setting a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for Total Chromium at 100 parts per billion (ppb). In 2016, Scottsdale’s average Total Chromium level in our source water was 7.5 ppb, which is well under the EPA-designated MCL. The annual average Total Chromium in our distribution system, which represents what is actually received by our customers, was 1.3 ppb.

The difference in those numbers is due to the fact that Scottsdale water relies almost entirely on our surface water sources, which have very low concentrations of Hexavalent Chromium. The Total Chromium we have in our source water comes from a few of our groundwater wells, which are generally used only to meet high demand during summer peaking.

At only 1.3 ppb, the Total Chromium levels in Scottsdale's drinking water is almost 1/100th of the EPA-mandated maximum contaminant level.

Scottsdale Water continually tests for all regulated (and some unregulated) substances and publishes those findings every July in our annual Water Quality Report. These reports provide valuable information regarding your drinking water, including where your water comes from, water treatment processes, results from continuous testing and how we stack up to federal standards.